


Dreams

by thedevilchicken



Category: Equilibrium (2002)
Genre: Background Het, F/M, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-19
Updated: 2004-03-19
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:09:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4212588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Preston collects, and recollects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 19 March 2004.

He sits there in that little room of Mary O'Brien's, behind the cracked and broken wall of what was once her apartment. He'd never really seen wallpaper before went there that first time and though the flowery, chintzy pattern was almost offensive to his sensibilities, that didn't really matter, that wasn't really the point. He crosses to the gramophone, sets the record playing. Always the same one, the only one - he burned so many through the years and now he regrets it bitterly. Mozart, Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky - what might they have sounded like? Was there ever anything as shattering as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? He doesn’t think now that he'll ever know. 

He sets the photo on the table, resting it back against the base of the gramophone, and pulls up a chair. He sets the red ribbon down beside the picture, runs his fingertips over the satin and smiles softly; it reminds him of Mary, reminds him of _him_ if only by association. He has next to nothing that belonged to him; if he'd gone to his desk it would have all been the same as he'd find at his own, a picture of conformity. The Tetragrammaton has confiscated everything from his apartment. He doesn’t even have that book of poetry, the bloodstained Yeats that’s like all of him collected there in one object he can’t have. All he has is a photograph of two people that he's lost, and memories.

It’s always been the ones that are closest to him, it seems, that are the ones he couldn't read: his wife, his children, Partridge. Sense offenders, all of them, and he hadn't known until the end. It was his job to know and he failed. But that isn’t what grieves him most, as he runs his fingers over the photograph; he failed at his job but he also failed _them_. 

After his wife was taken he was strangely conflicted. It wasn't a feeling - the Prozium saw to that - but the thought nagged at him that there must have been something more he could have done. It ate at him. There had been signs in her that he'd overlooked and then he'd let them take her. Then he'd let her die, and then he'd been alone. It was different, and hard to adjust when his routine had been so altered, when the bed beside his was empty. 

Taking comfort in his partner had seemed only natural; they worked well together in their duties as Clerics and so when it became clear that Preston's change in circumstances was affecting his work, Partridge had made the suggestion. Preston had told himself that it was solely for the satisfaction of a biological imperative that he shared a bed with Errol Partridge. At the time, he believed it. 

Partridge - Errol, because after his death he’s started to call him that, in his head - had been a pillar of stability. Coming home from work with too-tense muscles that his wife had used to soothe and an inexplicable urge to destroy something, anything, it helped when he could pull off his clothes and bury himself inside Errol's all too willing body, thrust inside him, claw at his biceps and feel the sweat pool at the base of his spine. He might not have felt emotions but he still needed contact, needed connection, needed sex. 

But Errol was different. Perhaps in the beginning he'd still been taking the Prozium. Perhaps. And perhaps back then when it first started it really was about the sex but they spent more and more time together. The children became accustomed to seeing both men at breakfast. Preston still remembers pushing the beds together and almost slipping between them in the night. He remembers Errol's eyes while he was inside him. 

Somewhere along the line things changed. There are still two of Errol's shirts and a pair of polished black boots in the closet; all their shoes had been the same, all the shirts and the coats and the pants that had ever hung there were identical except for variations in size. Sometimes the items got mixed up and so he'd divided up the closet space, half for him and half for his partner. It was more efficient, he'd said. Errol had looked like he wanted to say something, but he just nodded instead. 

Looking back, after that, he can see it: lingering glances, Errol's gloved hand on his chest smoothing creases from his creaseless coat, the way he'd looked at him after sex. It’s all so very obvious; Errol had started to care for him. He'd started to _feel_ for him. He'd just never known it. 

"You always knew."

He'd had no idea. At least not on the surface. 

The music swells, the violins soaring, bringing the prickle of tears to his eyes; he brushes them away with the back of his hand because even though he’s happy to feel, he doesn’t feel happy. He'd always known. He just hadn't wanted to see. 

He'd tried not to sit and stare at the empty bed when Errol went back to his own apartment. He made excuses to stay out late, like Errol made excuses not to come. Now he knew that all those nights he wasn't with him, in his bed, he'd been out in the Nether. He was probably with Mary. Had he gone to her for feeling, for the emotion he'd never had from Preston? Perhaps. He'll never know. 

He's brought back to the room everything he could retrieve from the evidence locker - the record, lamps, jewellery, the postcards with the women in red polka dot swimsuits and wide-brimmed hats. He can’t remember where it was all supposed to go so he's just guessed. Mary would have told him it didn't matter as long as it was all there, that the attention to detail was just the Cleric in him and not the man and so he's let it be. Now it doesn't matter. He’s collecting things of his own - books and paintings and tatty old brightly-coloured clothes. His son and daughter are in the other room wearing colours that clash just because it makes them smile. 

He thinks of Mary in her silly frilly skirt with her wisp of red lipstick and bare legs. Then he thinks of his wife and that last kiss, her dying passion. He thinks of Errol and his clear green eyes. He thinks perhaps he loved them all but couldn’t feel it. 

Perhaps Prozium wasn't as effective as they'd thought. Perhaps it didn't deaden emotions completely but repress them, tuck them away, and when the drug wears off then they come spilling out. He hates himself for his wife's death and for Mary's. He sat with a gun to his head for almost an hour thinking of the night he'd shot Errol. A part of him he'd never known existed had fallen for them all, even as his conscious self had sentenced them to death. 

He tucks the photograph back into his breast pocket then turns off the gramophone. He leaves the ribbon where it is, turns out the light and leaves the room. His children are waiting. 

He's done terrible things to the people he's loved, and because of him perhaps now the world will be chaos. But he thinks maybe it’s worth it when he takes his children's hands in his. Maybe it was worth it to have known love. 

Maybe it was worth it to feel. 

\--  
But I, being poor have only my dreams;  
I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.  
-W.B. Yeats  
\--


End file.
